The New Order Of Bots / A Dystopian Scenario, Two Days Before International Labor Day

OK, so what if this happens, as a scenario to unfold, say, in the US:

- of those laid off now only a relatively small fraction is hired back,

- instead there is a quantum jump in robotic applications, with a new generation of machines doing many of the tasks done, until yesterday, by humans,

- producing unprecedented high levels of profits and exploitation from the few humans still employed,

- involving a major shift in the structure of capital (reducing labor costs and increasing fixed capital)--seemingly a technical issue but with implications for the ways in which capital functions, the role of financial institutions, the relations between banking, industry and non-financial services, etc.,

- thus changing the underlying structural basis for politics from the capital-labor relation to a technical dystopia of "a search for the most efficient kind of automation,"

- resulting in a major overall devaluation of the overall perceived value of human life, especially since most of the jobs that will be eliminated will have involved low or mid-level skill sets, offering a perfect excuse, to be promulgated in the media controlling the representational and cognitive processes of most humans on Planet Earth in the hands of, and directly controlled along the interests of, Big Capital, to shave them off,

- a major, hitherto unprecedented degree of differentiation takes place within the category of "labor," creating a tiny, technologically hyper-trained, while in terms of human qualities strikingly antisocial and un-cultured numerical minority occupying commanding heights of the new March Of The Bots,

- leaving the vast majority of humans, those with low to mid-level "skill sets" in extremely precarious positions (to be noted: as such, precarity is nothing new; its magnitude may very well be),

- and creating a very distinct, sizable portion of the population that is neither employed nor employable, given the structural features of the New Order, releasing unprecedented amounts of free time that, frankly, nobody has any idea what they will, or could, do with,

- all that in the presence of approximately 1.4 to 1.5 times more firearms in private hands than the total population (including infants),

- even though, clearly, the COVID2019 pandemic will reduce the size of the population, hence, in theory, somewhat reducing the unemployed / unemployable population, but the release of labor from employment could be many, many times, perhaps one or even two magnitudes, greater than the number of those falling prey to the pandemic, not to mention that COVID2019 seems to take the old and the frail, i.e. disproportionately people who are not in the labor market any more,

- resulting in a radical redefinition of such basic notions as 'citizenship', 'personhood', 'sociality', 'values', 'dignity', and 'rights', etc.,

- creating a huge crowd of people with no economic, cultural or social means to survive, nor any enforceable rights.

What will be the impact of all that on Planet Earth?

Hint: A shift like that is difficult to imagine without a war. One question, among many, whose war would that be against whom? Or. . . what?

Comments